Holiday Season Starts Strong With a pipeline full of protein, seasonal holiday demand started strong with Thanksgiving. As of 31 October, cold storage stocks of turkey were lower than year-ago levels after the second consecutive month of drawdowns. The total pounds in freezers were 96 percent of last year and 79 percent of the previous month. Total red meat in cold storage was 99 percent of both the previous month and October 2017, driven by reductions in pork inventories that left those supplies down 3 percent from September and 5 percent lower than a year ago. Frozen pork was 97 percent of September and 95 percent of last year. Bellies were drawn down to 88 percent of last year’s inventory. Beef, however, was 102 percent of both a...
Markets are caught between reasons to keep selling and reasons to take another look. Fund liquidation and renewed peace talks are pressuring grains, while fresh export business and some diesel relief offer encouragement. Corn recovered nearly 10 cents from its low to finish higher, while soybea...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.